An attractive volume of the full suite of 56 engravings, with the frontispiece, of the second Latin edition of the Litaniae Lauretanae ad Beatae Virginis, by the brothers Joseph Sebastian Klauber (1710–68) and Johann Baptist Klauber (1712–87) of Augsburg. These plates have been separated from Franz Xavier Dorn’s accompanying text and bound in this binding, likely for private devotion. “The workshop of Joseph Sebastian and Johann Baptist Klauber is often looked upon as an epitome of Augsburg’s eighteenth-century print art” (P. Stoll, ‘Empire of Prints’, 2016, p. 24) and the design here is typical of the rococo idiom they favored, with abundant ornament in each plate giving a distinctly luxurious, baroque feel to the suite. Each plate represents an invocational prayer and depicts the Virgin Mary, accompanied by Bible quotations arranged in and around the image. Jesuit Ulrich Probst is credited at the foot of the frontispiece for providing the inspiration behind the compositions, the subsequent designs for which were likely by Gottfried Bernhard Göz (1708–74), who joined the brothers in the engraving business in 1737.

Alongside the dedication to Probst at the foot of the first engraving, and at the foot of every plate thereafter is “C.p.S.C.M.” (Cum privilegio Sacrae Caesareae Maiestatis) and “Klauber Cath. Sc. et exc. a.v.”. The latter is occasionally still identified as the signature of “Catharina Klauber” – explained variously as an unknown sister, and even pseudonym of Joseph Sebastian Klauber – but this is a misinterpretation of “Klauber Cath.[olici].” As both Thieme-Becker (Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler…(1907–50), 411–12) and Peter Stoll note, the presence of “Cath.” so prominently is noteworthy: “in a city whose print business had long been dominated by protestants and where it had been a matter of course to assign Catholic subjects to protestant engravers, the Klaubers’ public emphasis on their denomination can only mean that they wanted to entice Catholic patrons away from protestant engravers by implying that now, in the middle of the eighteenth century, Catholics at last no longer needed to turn to heretics for prints” (Stoll, p. 26).

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